Johnson 1
Lexie Johnson
Cooper
CRWR 212
April 22, 2014
Humanimal
Bhanu
Kapil's novel, Humanimal, was about two girls who lived in the jungle among
wolves. These girls were then captured by Reverend Joseph Singh so that they
could live a normal human life. The girls died at young ages. Kapil used
wonderful diction to describe the imagery used throughout the poems. She describes
how the forest looked and how she felt while in the forest. She paints this
nice visual for the reader.
Kapil
traveled to India so that she could make a documentary on this story of Amala
and Kamala. She visited the jungle where the girls were. She wanted to
recreated this moment and also understand how it must have been for the girls.
Her novel is seen from two different perspectives. She gives us a journal feel
of what was happening when she was filming and visiting these places and she
gives us a stanza from the girls perspectives of what they must have been
feeling. Kapil goes through her experience thoroughly and In great detail to
express how each moment was there in India.
Throughout
Humanimal, we get this sense of a religious/spiritual experience. Kapil is
going through the forest and trying to figure out how life must have been for
the girls and she imagines what it was like to be there and actually seeing the
wolf girls. While going through this experience, Kapil can actually feel the
presence of the girls and visually see what life was like after they were
captured. There was a part in the story when Kapil mentioned seeing a picture
of God in the dark room. This moment made Kapil feel some type of way and have
flashbacks of her own childhood. Doing this documentary seemed like it was a
life changing experience for Kapil. This is something she would always be able
to remember in her life. I believed this experience to be life changing because
in her writing she spoke about how she felt knowing that this girl died a
couple of years after they were captured.
The
plot of this story is that the girls died within years of being captured. We expected
them to live longer because they were finally back to the natural environment
that they were supposed to be in. after reading this book it made me wonder
what is normal and why did the girls die. I think because their bodies were immune
to living the jungle life. When Kapil wrote about how the girl’s bodies didn't respond
well to the food that they were served this was supposedly nutritious for them.
This questions what is really nutritious for the human body and it shows that
each body is different and requires different types of proteins. It makes me
question whether or not humans would be safe to live freely among the
animals. These girls who lived as a part
of wolf pack were able to survive till they were merely teenagers. They then
get captured and die of diseases. This made
me wonder if human were the ones who created some of these diseases because they
became so unattached from nature.
Reading
Humanimal had some of the same themes that was in other stories we read in this
class. It made me think about what being away from our natural roots can do to
us and that we don’t need all of this artificial stuff to survive. Even though
this story was fiction, I think that it portrayed our life must have been for
these girls pretty well. The calming tone of this novel made me think that
being in the wild wasn't such a bad thing. These girls were living just fine
before they were captured. Being captured messed with the flow of their lives
and it made me think about how animals feel when we take them out of their natural
habitat.
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